One Small Thing

by Barksdale Inclan, Jessica

  Breathing in, Dan shook his head. “I—I’m sorry.”

  “That’s what you always say, Dan. But nothing’s changed.”

  “I know.”

  Dan could see Jared nodding, the nod he must give his patients. Sometimes, Dan couldn’t believe that’s what Jared did all day, listening and giving advice, advice people took. Advice that changed people’s lives. “Okay.” Jared settled back in his seat. “Well, I’m still here.”

  Dan nodded, pushed on the accelerator, and pulled down the sun visor. “Thanks,” he said, the word so full on his tongue, bigger in feeling than sound. “I mean it.”

  Jared sighed and pushed on the radio, tuning into KCBS and the weather and traffic report. Heavy back-ups on the Sunol grade, the San Mateo Bridge, West 680. Delays at the Bay Bridge and Caldecott Tunnel. Partial clouds, chance of rain, early clearing.

  After dropping Jared off and driving home, Dan sat in the backyard, the sky full of afternoon heat and purple finches that landed on Avery’s birdfeeder, pecked at the empty plastic, and then flew away. No diners tonight at Avery’s bird restaurant, he thought, remembering how excited she’d been when Dan had put it up. He’d gone to Orchard Nursery and asked for the special anti-squirrel, anti-Jay feeder, a baffle and a metal cage around it. He’d also bought a heavy, expensive sack of peanuts, pumpkin and sunflower seeds that looked good enough to set on the table during a poker game at Luis’. When he brought everything home, Avery’s face lit up as it hadn’t for a long while during those months of shots and tests, and she refilled it every other day. She’d gone out and bought a bird book, whispering, “A grosbeak! A nuthatch. Let’s see. A pygmy nuthatch. Oh, look. That one’s yellow. A Lesser Goldfinch,” as she stood by the window, the book open in her hands. Until the Fourth of July, she’d actually kept a list of all the different birds that came to eat, excited by the permutations of male, female, breeding, summer, and juvenile markings.

  As he sat in the chair, the portable telephone in his lap, he knew he should fill up the birdfeeder. At the very least, it would make him feel that something was normal in this day of abnormalities. But he couldn’t. His body felt drained by the long car rides and the pinched, angry look on Daniel’s face and the sad set of his dark eyes. When he leaned back and stared into the dark blue sky, he heard Midori Nolan’s voice, “99% conclusive of paternity.” He heard her say, “If you want him,” and remembered the expression on Jared’s face, the look that said, “Don’t fuck this one up, bro. This time, don’t drop the ball.”

  Part of Dan wanted to drop kick the past, including the boy and all of his baggage, out into space. He wanted to fly to St. Louis and lie to Avery, tell her that it was all a big mistake. Randi, in her drugged out, desperately ill state, had written a drastic note to try to save her son. Yes, the boy was in foster care, but he could tell her that the foster mother was all right. Liza had said he was doing better. Daniel needed help, and he would get it there, in Turlock, in that school district, with Liza and her eccentric engineer husband. Dan and Avery wouldn’t have to do a thing but send monthly support checks and maybe big Christmas presents every year. Case closed, crisis averted.

  But that wasn’t what happened, and Dan knew that Avery needed to know the truth. He looked at the phone in his lap, and dialed her hotel number that he’d written out before he came outside.

  “Hello,” Avery said, the clip of work in her voice.

  “It’s me.” He heard the hum of a hotel room—lights, television, air conditioning—and something else, like muffled conversation.

  “What happened? Did you go?” She seemed more interested than she had on Monday. She’d given him a quick, absent kiss that just missed his forehead and whispered, “I’ll call you,” before walking outside to get into the Bay Porter van. Maybe she did care.

  “I went. I took Jared with me. We met him, Aves,” he said, the dark eyes in front of him as he spoke. “And he’s mine.”

  “Oh. Oh.” She paused, and he heard a door or a drawer open and close. “God.”

  “I know.”

  “No, I don’t think you do. And I don’t know how you feel really, either. We aren’t in this together in the way we would have been if I got pregnant.”

  “I know.”

  “Stop saying that! No you don’t. You don’t know what this is like for me. You barely know what this is like for you. You just met him, for Christ’s sake. You have no idea what the future will be like for us, for him. Oh, God.”

  Dan sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry Aves.”

  “So am I. God . . . So what is going to happen? How does this whole thing fit into our lives?”

  “He’s not a thing, he’s a little boy,” Dan said, heat fluming his cheeks the way it had the night he bashed up the crib. He blinked, trying to push that memory of the splintered wood out of his head.

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant how does the process unfold? Jeez, Dan. What do you have to do?”

  “I’ve set up some meetings with Daniel. Midori and I have to tell him the story. He doesn’t know anything yet. He’ll be very shocked.”

  Avery breathed in deeply. “Like the rest of us.”

  “Yeah.”

  There was sound in the room again, and he heard Avery’s earrings clank against the receiver. “Is someone there with you?”

  “No. I just turned off the TV. Look, I’ll be home Friday. We have got to figure all of this out. We have a lot to discuss.”

  Dan nodded, knowing that as of this second, he wished Friday would never come. “I kn—right. Right. Um, well, how’s it going out there?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that. I’ll see you then, okay?” Avery’s voice was back to her brisk, get-it-done cadence.

  “All right,” Dan said, hanging up.

  Resting the phone on his thigh, he watched a scrub jay land on top of the feeder, cocking its head down, trying to figure out how to land.

  “Hey,” Dan said, but his voice was too low to scare anything, all his pointed words used up in the phone call. Neither of them had said one soft word to each other, the space between them now as cold as the empty plateau in their bed, mattress and blankets smoothed to silence since the fourth of July.

  

  After work on Wednesday, Dan stopped home to take some measurements, the same way he had measured a year earlier before Avery and Valerie went out to buy the crib and changing table. But now, he had to find out how wide and long the bed could be. A single bed. He hadn’t bought a single bed ever, leaving the one his parents bought for him years ago. When he went home to Sacramento, he’d walk up the stairs and push open the door of the room he and Jared shared, his old little bed looking just that. Little. He’d never fit in that room or in his parents’ house, chafing under all the strict lines his father drew in the sand. “Be home by 12 midnight, God Dammit, or you’re grounded! And I mean it this time,” his father would say behind the slammed front door.

  “Please drive carefully,” his mother would whine as she opened the garage door to watch him drive away. “Don’t get into any trouble tonight, Danny. He’s at the end of his rope.”

  Even though those years had been terrible for his parents, his mother had left his room as it had been when he was in high school, a testament to trouble. When he went home for the holidays while he was at Cal, he’d found old stash taped to the bottom of his dresser drawers and in the shoe box in the left-hand corner of the closet. Thank God, he thought then, he hadn’t remembered his hidden loot one strung-out night with Randi, breaking into his own house, his parents having to call the police again. If he’d remembered, he would have.

  As Dan pulled out the measuring tape, jotting down the room dimensions, he wondered when he should call Marian and Bill. When was the proper time to announce the existence of their first grandchild? And then, he would have to tell them Daniel was Randi’s boy. Randi was their least favorite person in the world, even if she wasn’t of this world anymore. His father would stop in mid-act
ion, his face clouding and stilling as it did every time Dan had brought home bad news, laying it down in front of their feet like a dead rat. This would be no different, except it would be worse because it would last as long as Daniel did, which would be for the rest of all their lives.

  The measuring tape slid back metal and clangy, and Dan stood up. Bed. Dresser. Clothes. Shoes. Toys. School supplies. And what about all those things kids did now? Video games? Scooters with motors on the back? At least Daniel already had a bike. That was taken care of, but he needed everything else. Dan closed his eyes and thought of his boy, short, thin, his pants so big his belt was dangling even on the last hole. His stringy hair under the baseball cap; his curious, deep eyes. His mouth, like Dan’s, wanting to slap out at everyone, especially some nosey stranger who asked questions. Maybe, Dan thought, as he opened and closed the closet door, Avery was right to take a job that would allow her to escape. Maybe his parents had been right to turn away from all the pain he’d put before them.

  Just as he was about to leave for Target, the phone rang. He hoped it might be Avery, so he answered it instead of letting the machine pick up.

  “Dan? It’s Isabel.”

  Dan let a sigh build up in his mouth, but he didn’t exhale the sound. “Hi. How are you doing?”

  “Oh, me. Well, fine. But—well, Loren called me. Valerie called her. They’re worried. It’s just—I want to know how you two are doing.”

  Dan shook his head. Loren and her damned big mouth, he thought, needing something nasty to talk about. But then he sighed, knowing that both she and Valerie should be worried, Avery suddenly absent, silent, out of the house by seven a.m. “Oh, yeah. It’s been hard.” He leaned against the kitchen counter, thinking of ways to get off the phone. The doorbell? Luis and Valerie needed him right away? He had to go back to work immediately? But Isabel kept talking.

  “Of course it’s hard. What a surprise. A sad surprise in many ways. But where is Avery? Why hasn’t she called me? Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “She went back to work. She’s in St. Louis,” Dan said, letting more secrets fly free. Why not?

  “What? Now? When there is so much to do and think about? When this big thing is happening?”

  “Yeah. She won’t be back until Friday.”

  “Oh, my.” For the first time, Dan thought he detected disapproval in his mother-in-law’s voice. “Oh, my.”

  “Well—“he stopped, not knowing what else to say.

  “This is such big news. Really.” Isabel stopped talking, her breath against the receiver.

  “I can have her call you then,” he said, finding the door handle of this conversation.

  “But, Dan. What’s the next step? Have you met him? He’s yours, right?” Isabel asked, flinging the door wide again.

  “Yesterday. Jared came with me. He’s mine.”

  “Oh, my. That’s—well, congratulations, I guess you’d say.” Dan saw Valerie on their deck, Tomás strapped to her chest in a Baby Bjorn. She turned to the house, noticed him, and waved. He waved back, as if it were any other day in any other year, this another Wednesday evening in a typical week.

  “Yeah. Thanks, but listen—“

  “How are you planning? Have you decided when he’s coming? What about his room? Will you use the nursery?”

  “Actually, I was just about to go shopping. He’ll be here in a month or so. They want him here before school starts. Anyway, I need supplies I need everything.”

  “Can I come with you? Pick me up, Dan. Please, let me help.”

  Dan thought of the feared Jell-O salad that everyone scooped up on their plates and ate in big bites on the Fourth of July. Avery had been stunned and then annoyed every time any one said, “Oh, Isabel. This is so good. My mother used to make it, and it was always my favorite. I just love the walnuts. And what is this secret ingredient? Cottage cheese?” No one had noticed Avery’s grimace and closed eyes, all nodding at Isabel appreciatively, asking for the recipe, handing over email addresses and phone numbers, saying, “I need it for a picnic,” or “Now, don’t forget!”

  Dan rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay. Great. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. I have a long list.”

  “Wonderful. I’ll be waiting.”

  Isabel pushed the big red cart down the aisle that cut through the clothing section. Dan checked off pants and shirts, and then looked up. “Okay. Underwear.”

  Isabel looked up and then followed the signs, both of them soon standing in front of a rack of boys’ underwear.

  “What are all these cartoons?” Isabel asked. “My, underwear has changed. My girls had flowers, a little lace, and maybe colors. But look at these.” She pointed to a pack of underwear with Spiderman’s large webbed face on the front. Next to that was pack with Daredevil; next to that, X-Men. Dan smiled, remembering how he and Jared would read comic books in their room, one after the other, over and over again.

  “It’s a whole marketing thing.” Dan picked up a pack and read the back label. Weight. What was his weight? He closed his eyes and imagined picking Daniel up under his arms, lifting him up and down. Seventy, seventy-five pounds? He was so skinny, his knees must look like knobs, his elbows pointy and dangerous. Dan opened his eyes and then found the correct size for the weight and threw five packs in cart.

  “Well, he’ll be in underwear for a long time.” Isabel moved the cart toward the socks. “I can’t imagine what socks will look like if underwear have cartoons on them.”

  The socks weren’t even half as exciting—rows of white athletic socks, short, white skate socks, and a few brown and blue dress socks, but Dan couldn’t even imagine what size of shoe a ten-year-old would wear. Isabel looked at him, her eyes wide.

  “I had girls,” she said, shrugging. “Let me ask the young woman over there.”

  She walked over to the counter and leaned up against it, laughing with the clerk, who began to ask questions about her grandson. Isabel didn’t miss a beat, providing the information, and then she was back, taking the right size from the rack and putting pack after pack in the cart.

  “I’ve heard,” she said, “that boys are a little rougher on clothing than girls.”

  “You aren’t kidding,” Dan said. At ten, if he and Jared weren’t helping Bill trim trees, stack bricks, or mow the lawn or with him in a neighbor’s yard doing the same, they were up trees, in huge holes they’d dug in the backyard, or with the neighbor kids rolling on lawns and running through the streets. For one summer, none of his pants had knees, his mother ironing on patches, saying, “I refuse to buy you any more pants until just before school starts. Really, Danny, what do you do outside?” But she was smiling when she said it. Dan remembered that, even all these years later.

  “Well, let’s move on.” Isabel looked at Dan’s list. “I can see we’ve barely started. And then when we’re done here, I’m going to take you to dinner. My treat.”

  Dan followed her past the socks and belts and girls’ tights, swallowing down her kindness, surprised how the colored underwear and small, white socks reminded him he needed his mother, a mother, any mother, right now.

  “Oh,” Isabel said, pushing away her plate, only one bite of hamburger and two French fries left, Taxi’s burgers so good even she couldn’t stop eating. “I am fully sequansified and have had a genteel sufficiency.”

  Dan smiled. If Avery were here, she’d roll her eyes at her mother’s strange family expression, the sequansified not even a word at all. But as he looked at Isabel’s happy, truly satisfied face, she could see that she meant it, glad to be out, to be of use.

  “Me, too,” he said. “And I don’t have any leftovers.” A tall boy with swirls of acne on either cheek came at took their plates, brushing the fry and hamburger bun crumbs off the table with a damp rag. Dan sucked on his straw, pulling in the last of his Coke.

  “Dan, I have to ask. I know it’s not my business at all. But—is . . . has Avery left for good? I want to know. Her asking for her job back seems, well, s
trange. Especially after all the hard work both of you put in toward having the baby.” Isabel breathed out, the words taking all her air.

  “No. She didn’t,” he said. “I mean, she hasn’t moved out. It’s just the job.”

  Isabel shook her head. “I really can’t believe she gave up on the baby, even with your news. When she wants something, she sticks with it.”